With much fanfare, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger came to Carson in 2006 to announce plans to build a $1 billion “green” power plant.

The project would be the “cleanest and greenest” in the United States and would be an early test of carbon-capture technology, in which carbon dioxide emissions are permanently stored underground.

But three years later, the project has been quietly abandoned. The companies involved say the local geology turned out to be inhospitable, but they also encountered resistance from local environmentalists.

The Carson project exposed a rift between environmentalists who say that carbon-capture poses risks to surrounding communities and those who say it is essential to mitigating climate change.

“The mainstream environmental groups are supporting it, while us, the environmental justice organizations are opposing it,” said Jesse Marquez, of the Wilmington Coalition for a Safe Environment. “There’s a breaking in the ranks there.”

BP America teamed up with Edison International to build the project, which would have been located next to the BP Carson refinery. The plant would have used leftover petroleum coke to generate electricity.

The resulting carbon dioxide would be sold to Occidental Petroleum, which would pump it into the ground to improve oil recovery.

Tiffany Rau, a spokeswoman for the project, said that Occidental, which runs the largest oil drilling operation in the Wilmington Field, decided not to buy the gas.

“There was no commercial interest in purchasing the CO2 in nearby oil fields,” Rau said. “We decided to shut down.”

Susie Geiger, a spokeswoman for Occidental Petroleum, said that the company’s geologists determined that the Wilmington Field was not amenable to a flood of carbon dioxide.

Geiger said the project was not abandoned because of local opposition. But Marquez said that his group was preparing to wage a broad-based campaign against it, out of fears that the carbon dioxide might seep out of the ground or that the project might pose other hazards.

“We were the primary opponent, and we were able to cause its early demise,” Marquez said. “We stop 90 percent of all projects.”

BP and Occidental have since announced plans to develop a similar project in Kern County, which would generate about half as much electricity as the initial proposal in Carson.

The area around the Elk Hills oil field is much more rural than the Carson-Long Beach area, but Marquez said he and his allies would fight the project there as well.

“There’s no place for it here in California,” he said. “Allowing carbon sequestration lets the polluter continue polluting as normal. It keeps us dependent on fossil fuels when we’re trying to develop a sustainable society with renewable energy resources.”

But other environmental groups say that carbon capture technology is an essential part of preventing global warming, and that Marquez’s concerns about the project are overblown.

George Paridas, a scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that the carbon dioxide would be sealed under several thousand feet of rock. Even if it did leak out, it would pose relatively little risk to nearby residents.

“There is ample evidence this is not a dangerous activity,” Paridas said. “Even though I sympathize with their concerns around siting of the plant, I think the arguments they put forward regarding the mechanics of sequestration itself were not valid.”

Advocates of the technology note that carbon dioxide is commonly used to help extract oil in Texas and other places.

There is also a plant in operation in North Dakota that pumps its carbon dioxide 300 miles north to Saskatchewan, where it is used to help with oil recovery.

“We’re not going to be able to address climate change without carbon capture and storage,” said Kurt Waltzer, of the Clean Air Task Force. “It’s unlikely that all the countries in the world that use fossil fuel are going to wean themselves off of fossil fuels in 60 years.”

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.